Do or Die: AMD Moves Away From PCs Amid Steep Losses

[Guest]

Historically, AMD has surprised analysts and investors with a better than expected quarter result in 20 of the past 48 earnings calls. Today's was not one of those calls, but there was still a surprise.

Do or Die: AMD Moves Away From PCs Amid Steep Losses : Read more

 

[fazers_on_stun]

My guess is that de-emphasizing PCs means much less focus on desktop CPUs, so Steamroller might get delayed considerably..

 

[division_9]

I hope Rory read gets it right, nothing more depressing than an Intel/Nvidia monopoly. Unless of course you count VIA.

 

[back_by_demand]

A lot of HTPCs benefit from AMD APUs, great little machines that don't need i7 power, if they hit that market hard and kept up the pressure in the games console market they are onto a winner - but really they need a big entry in the tablet market, if x86 Windows 8 Pro defies all negative press and sells like hotcakes then AMD need to have a tablet CPU (or APU) alternate to the i5 very quickly or Intel may well tie up another virtual monopoly

 

[baconeater]

Intel desktop Processors are now gonna be 5x the price with no competition.

 

[loops]

Question is, do most ppl need a faster CPU?

Question is, do most ppl want more mobile CPUs?

 

[jhansonxi]

[citation][nom]back_by_demand[/nom]A lot of HTPCs benefit from AMD APUs, great little machines that don't need i7 power, if they hit that market hard and kept up the pressure in the games console market they are onto a winner - but really they need a big entry in the tablet market, if x86 Windows 8 Pro defies all negative press and sells like hotcakes then AMD need to have a tablet CPU (or APU) alternate to the i5 very quickly or Intel may well tie up another virtual monopoly[/citation]They could be in the tablet market now with Android but they have the same problem as Intel - x86 is too inefficient for mobile. While AMD has GPUs to fall back on, Intel has much better diversity throughout their product lines.

 

[AstroTC]

Lets help AMD!! Buy a AM3+ CPU!!

 

[esrever]

So more than 50% of their business is still going to be PC. Doesn't seem bad. Considering the market AMD can gain in servers/cloud and tablets, this could be an optimistic thing.

 

[maestro0428]

He's right. Media consumption is moving to the mobile environment. Problem is, you can't make media on a tablet or smart phone. We will always need desktops for media creation. My wife hasn't been on her PC since I bought her an iPhone and iPad. That's almost a year. Of course I am on my pc everyday day for several hours. It would be sad to see AMD pull out, especially out of the graphics market where they are very competitive.

 

[gto127]

I don't know about you guys but I don't like the sound of this. "AMD moving away from PCS" I can't imagine a market of intel only CPUS. We can do something about this folks. I'm ordering a AMD APU & motherboard. I would reccomend everyone that reads this do the same & pass the word on & tell your friends to do the same. Money talks & if we order enough then mabye they will continue to sell CPUS for PCS. If the only choice is Intel then the price will go UP UP UP & will become a very niche market. Let's keep the PC market alive. Who's with me?

 

[m32]

It is going to be very upsetting if AMD doesn't do something in the 4th quarter this year. The new processors should be a good price and they knock down the prices of the other CPUs.

 

[BulkZerker]

In before all the intel fanboys crow about how the i7 is faster.

AMD's going for volume and they need to do that. Spending 50% of your R&D on the 10% of the market is foolish and CPUs now are more than powerful enough, especially if your willing to overclock.

 

[kronos_cornelius]

AMD should forget about the stand alone CPU and focus on the APU chips for tablets and servers.

It should also work to get into the ARM business.

I hope AMD makes it out of the tailspin.

 

[abbadon_34]

no please noooo

 

[Guest]

Errrr... Nice spin, Tom's.

Historically, haven't they always had that 50/20/20/10/... PC/Server/Console/Graphics/Whatever?

You act as if they are new to servers or gaming consoles, this is hardly a deviation from what they were already doing, Rory is just stating it in a "don't worry, I'm handling it" kind of way...

 

[pacioli]

Not good! If AMD fails CPU and GPU markets will be affected. This is a case of having too many eggs in one basket...

 

[A Bad Day]

[citation][nom]baconeater[/nom]Intel desktop Processors are now gonna be 5x the price with no competition.[/citation]

Intel has no answer for APUs, and you can't stick an i7 in a tablet. It won't work.

 

[snemarch]

I'm sad to see how AMD has deteriorated since they launched the kick-ass original AMD64.

But outside of budget CPUs, IMHO they just haven't delivered anything very interesting the last many years - couple that with a marketing department that has been outright lying (across multiple "oops, let's scapegoat and find a new head" attempts), and you've got a really icky situation.

I think AMD needs to figure out what their raison d'être is, and fast. Intel has the crown for both performance and power consumption, and AMD just doesn't have anything really competitive (for the segments I'm interested in, anyway - high-end-but-not-too-bad-power-consumption desktop and low-power-consumption-when-most-idle-but-muscle-for-peaks server). Worst thing is, Intel CPUs don't even seem to be that much more expensive than AMD anymore when you consider performance/price ratios rather than just price :/

What's going to happen to prices if AMD goes bust? Especially since most people have "fast enough" machines now, the speed increase is stagnating, and a lot of people don't really need anything more than consumer devices (and possibly consoles for gaming needs) - the future could end up pretty darn expensive for us developers and content producers. And I'm slightly ashamed that my recent server build means my total builds are now skewed even further away from a 50/50 between Intel and AMD.

 

[bystander]

[citation][nom]A Bad Day[/nom]Intel has no answer for APUs, and you can't stick an i7 in a tablet. It won't work.[/citation]
I'm not sure about that. The i7 part. I know they are putting i5's in the MS Surface Pro. There isn't much difference between an i5 and i7.

I do agree that mobile APU's could be something AMD shines at.

 

[iam2thecrowe]

I think AMD needs to be sold to another company who can do something with them, before they dig themselves a hole they cant get out of. No one can deny it is the continued pursuit of this inefficient bulldozer architecture that has led to their downfall. They should have just dropped it and gone back to the old faithful Phenom II core and tweaked it.

 

[spartanmk2]

I just powered up my trusty AMD Athlon 64 3700+ for old times' sake.

 

[Ragnar-Kon]

[citation][nom]A Bad Day[/nom]Intel has no answer for APUs, and you can't stick an i7 in a tablet. It won't work.[/citation]
Doesn't really matter when tablet manufactures are choosing to put i3's and i5's in tablets, or stick with the various ARM offerings. AMD's APUs are great chips, but they just aren't being utilized enough to carry the entire company alone.

It seems as though the end of the x86 processor for lower-end applications is coming sooner rather than later. The good news is AMD seems to realize it, the bad news is they seem to be running out of money quickly.

For gamers, I fear the glory days for AMD are quickly coming to an end. AMD will probably still offer desktop CPUs as long as they continue developing the Opteron CPUs, which it seems like they will. The bad news is none of these chips will be designed with gaming/multimedia in mind.

 

[megamanx00]

[citation][nom]iam2thecrowe[/nom]I think AMD needs to be sold to another company who can do something with them, before they dig themselves a hole they cant get out of. No one can deny it is the continued pursuit of this inefficient bulldozer architecture that has led to their downfall. They should have just dropped it and gone back to the old faithful Phenom II core and tweaked it.[/citation]

They would loose their x86 license if they did that.

 

[megamanx00]

AMD is done, over, hasta la vista, the end.

If they had stuck with Dirk they wouldn't have this problem. They wouldn't have cut marketing and thus would have been better able to take advantage of NVidia's 600 series delays, they would have had direction and leadership rather than fear and uncertainty at the employee level, and they wouldn't have made such deep cuts to engineering (particularly the graphics that were making money) after they already lost some significant talent. It's like the performance of it's bulldozer CPU, not anyone thing by itself is fatal but this is death by 1,737+ cuts